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William was not supposed to be cruel.
Kings have the ability to act like they want. They can show mercy, prove to be heartless, change their mind without any consequences of their actions, because who would dare to stand against the highest of titles? Monarchal royalties may have not worked in Dahlia like they did in medieval times across the globe as they served only as a stroke to the already high vampiric ego, but no one found enough bravery in their hearts and minds to prove him differently.
William chose to be kind. He took it upon himself to act like this, because there was nothing more left to offer on the deathbed he found most of the poor souls of his future progenies in, clinging so desperately to the real world, hands shaking and breaths choking. What else could be useful, beside a word of hope, a promise to make it all better while the world outside turned darker and darker, head gently cradled in a hand that not only fed, but also kept you alive?
He was always anything but understanding to Vincent. Calm. Collected. Never the one to raise his voice, even when the man, the boy actually, age comically young for someone to have their whole life wrecked and turned upside down, refused to listen to him. Spewing some nonsense about not feeding, face pale and streaked with exhaustion one simple thing could fix. One simple thing he refused to do, gagging at the idea of drinking, even if only from a blood bag that weirdly resembled a juice pouch, the same one his mother used to get him during summer. When the weather turned unbearably hot, it did what it was supposed to, he still remembered the taste of oranges against his tongue, cool sensation easing the heat that bothered.
Even then, William still asked. Waited patiently for the response, like a father waits for an explanation as for why his kid misbehaved, wanting to understand his point of view. And as much he wanted to accept it and say he had a right, a meaningless death over what seemed mundane to him, was not necessary. Easily spared and avoided, one was enough for the trembling fledgling in front of him to go through.
Invocation didn't hurt that badly, Vincent recalled later on. What hurt, was the shame of it happening, the lack of control over his body, the way he was forced into doing whatever he was ordered around, that kind voice still gentle. And the blood that slid down his throat, paired with the crinkle of the plastic, while his eyes were closed, felt almost like during that one hot sunny day when he was tired and thirsty beyond forming coherent words, only his hand reaching for the juice. He hated him at first, of course he did, after the King stripped him of any dignity and right to choose for himself. But he understood why he did so.
William started to feel like a parent he was torn away from at some point of his new beginning. The strained relationship eased and mellowed out as time passed. There bloomed a sense of mutual acceptance, maybe a bit of one sided respect towards the King, and Vincent learned to live with the burden, title and one of the strongest vampires behind his back, acting all fatherly to him. It filled the void he was too afraid to voice out. After all, he was presumed dead. All ties with his previous name and existence ceased completely.
He was a Solaire now. With new family, new dreams, and the same old assumption that his true parents never stopped caring for him, carried deep down in the leftover part of his human heart that still managed to beat.
Years flew by. And while he remained the same twenty year old boy, face never changing, hair barely growing an inch as he kept it short, the world around kept going forward mercilessly. At first, he tried to keep up with it, later on, he lost the desire, getting more and more sucked into the new one. Magical one, where everything was at least a little obscured by the sparks in the air, and new way of survival. Days turned into nights, nights turned into the only moment when he could function with any brief resemblance to his old ways. With William's help and guidance, everything finally settled into its respective places, the reflection in the mirror no longer scary or foreign.
William was nothing but cruel. But his words were.
Vincent wasn't supposed to be contacting anyone from the previous lifetime, he knew. He wasn't supposed to keep an eye on anyone. They could only survive in his memory that turned more bleak and dull with every passing day, mental pictures obscured and probably biased by the good things he cherished. But the news broke him anyway.
His mother died. And he only got to know about it because William was so kind to inform him.
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As much as Porter wanted to believe in being a heartless, maybe unemotional, stone cold bastard that life etched him into, he was far from it. The vampiric ideal of leaving any attachments behind for the sake of rejecting humanity entirely, turned out to not work as well as he thought it would. He knew that growing used to something so easily perishable as another life, mortal on top of everything, would only bring pain. Grief was a natural thing to others, and there was a time when he fought against it too, teeth gritted and limbs going forward despite muscles aching for him to stop, core fried to a crisp, his abilities bringing only more and more proof that loving someone was a torture dressed in finest silks to make up for the heart ache that was bound to happen.
It was long time ago. Buried under years of mindless screaming, lashes of pain and hopes for something that never came. Grief for his sister was morphed into grief for his own sanity. Not being given a moment to process the loss, he was immediately thrown into a whirlwind of another one. There was not much time to accept the death he already suspected but wanted so desperately to ignore, mind repulsed by constant taste of bile on his tongue and disgust, not only for the hand that struck, but during painfully sleepless nights for himself. For falling for the offer and pretty words that meant nothing in the end.
But Vincent was no bastard. He wore his heart on the sleeve, he smiled widely as he should, his face always lighting up whenever he did, like a flower in bloom. So, seeing him so…stoic, taking in the news with eerie calmness painted all over him, Porter knew something was wrong. Being a coward, he didn't address it immediately, knowing that every interaction between them ended on the same note, none of them needed back then. Especially the poor boy who tried so hard to keep it all for himself, though the fists keep shaking when he excused himself, voice timid and quaint. Like a branch that would snap upon the slightest of touches, he closed the door behind him with a soft click of the lock.
No one had seen him since then. Not in the living area, where he liked to read, hiding from others with his nose buried in between pages of a book he snatched from the vast choice of William's impressive collection. He was not in his room, trying to sort through contacts for another contract to be signed. He was not with Sam, Alexis hadn't seen him either, and for some unknown reason, Porter grew uneasy at the inability to find the usually annoying Prince.
But the window in his bedroom was opened, night's breeze making the curtains sway in its rhythm, the vase in which he kept few lone flowers broken on the floor. Kicked, presumably, as he took his chance at escaping.
For some reason, he knew immediately, what place he would find him in, and for the first time in forever, Porter wished to be in the wrong. But the lock on the closed doors was picked messily, no prior experience to it by whoever tried it. And inside, on the stone cold floor, a familiar silhouette knelt, slumped over a shape he knew far too well.
He was too young to remember it properly, memory pushed away from his childish brain. He remembered the priest saying something over the coffin, remembered more of Dana's reassuring hugs and promises to make it better later, rather than the actual ceremony. When he grew a little, he recalled bringing flowers to the tomb with a name he only knew as belonging to his mother. When his father died, he had no reason to bother himself with visiting, abuse he lived through still fresh on his mind and in the ache of his body, and Dana wasn't granted a place for her own forever rest. Saying goodbye to his mother didn't feel real, words devoid of any emotion as he whispered them over the casket. Saying goodbye to his father was pointless, as the bastard didn't deserve anything good, even after death. Saying goodbye to Dana was taken away from him the moment he turned to face Felix, catching on the lie the vampire prepared for him so diligently.
Hearing Vincent's muffled voice made him cringe. Not because what he did was wrong, but because he wished he had the same chance all that time ago.
The heavy doors closed and the room of the chapel turned quiet, disturbed only by the soft cries into the sleeve of his sweater, back shuddering with every sob. Moonlight seeping through the stained glass behind it painted the floor in greens and blues, saints with the halos above their heads looking pitifully at the two vampires who didn't belong in a sacred place like that.
His footsteps echoed against the walls, sounding almost threatening in the morbid setting, long shadows exaggerated to the limit. Barely making yet another one, the younger vampire's head whipped around, neck snapping at a sudden movement, stuck in one position for so long.
Seeing him, standing so awkward and confused, seemed to ease the initial shock.
"How did you find me?" quickly wiping his face, he sniffled, trying to once more, wear the mask he had on in William's office. The same one that didn't suit him at all, slipping far too easily, He was not made to carry them constantly, no need to hide behind something he wasn't. Unlike Porter.
"You know that it's nothing for me." no snarky comment, no ugly word that bit hard. There was a place and time for it, yet under the judgment coming off the walls of the chapel, it was not it.
There was a point in his life when he knew he was cruel. But not on that night.
"Right. Of course." silence fell, disturbed only by faint sniffles and regret weighing heavily in the air, breaking both of their shoulders and crushing their ribcages. While Porter's chance of goodbyes were taken away from him, family always broken, until the very end, Vincent's were torn from his hands that desperately tried to cling to the assumption that out there somewhere, life kept going. Just without him in the picture.
Well, if it wasn't a great proof of one of those twists of fate. It's not like he had a choice in it anyway, the decision made for him. He just learned to live with the consequences.
"Why are you here?" Porter could sense the accusation in his tone, even if it was covered up with the tremble. Vincent quickly cleared his throat, hearing how pathetic he sounded, but the older man once again, ignored it.
"I don't know." honesty never came easy to be spoken so outright, but at the troubled sight of the Prince, he really had no words to be turned into lies.
His hair was messy, falling in uneven strands over his eyes, covering the puffiness of the skin, of the rings under the lower eyelids, stains showing how much he cared. His lip was trembling and no matter how much he tried to hide it behind the hand that kept fixing the collar of his sweater, brushing the annoying hair out of his face or rubbing his neck nervously, it still wobbled.
On the cold stairs, by the coffin standing in the middle, few flowers already placed around to be taken later, wasn't sitting the future of the clan, a Prince with head held high to prevent his silver crown from slipping, but a boy whose life was flashing behind his teary eyes, memories now serving more as a forever torment instead of something to look back upon with a smile. The time spent apart that could have been used for something better, instead only for wishing to be able to go back home. A full course meal, for the regrets he was unable to solve to dine on.
Living despite being dead. Knowing that out there, his mother was ripping the hair from her head for not taking a moment longer before he left home, never to return again, to tell him how much she loved him, while he was forced to keep going, never to be able to tell her how much he missed her. How much he wished he stayed that day, and helped with dinner instead, just like he always did. The only son more than dutiful and well behaved, always a rock for his mother to rely on.
Now he knew how she must have felt, receiving the news of the crash. How his body was never found, because while she was trying to find any help in the friendly police officer that lived on their street, he was more than well, physically at least. The case was closed, with the verdict of him being dead, and all she was able to do, was to hold a funeral for an empty casket and tomb with his name etched in stone. He visited it once, saw the fresh flowers among others, more wilted ones. Feeling like a proper bastard and acting more on a desperate need to have something from her, he took a few, placing them in the vase on his desk, the same one that Porter found broken.
"You picked the lock."
"I wasn't allowed inside."
"By who?"
"Whoever closed it."
"Right."
Despite the clear animosity, Porter sat down beside him, their shoulders bumping against each other. Lowering his head a little, to close the height difference between them both, he took a deep breath.
"I never got a chance to mourn someone." for another time that night, one more truth fell from his lips. However bitter and vulnerable it was, and however badly it stung, his ribcage feeling too tight around lungs.
"Why?" he wiped his face for the final time, coughing a little. At least, pretending to act normal while he had no reason to.
"I was either too young to understand it. Too angry to care about the person. Or too late."
"Oh." oh indeed.
"I never wished to do so. Not so early. I...I thought she had more time and that maybe I could…I could see her again." it was Vincent's turn to speak up, voice shaking between the words, breaks taken more and more often to gasp for air or clear his throat.
"Just one last time. So she could know that I'm fine. That I made it and I never forgot about her, I just… it wasn't up to me to not check on her. If it was, I would do it over and over again, until she grew sick of seeing my face."
"I doubt she would. You are her son."
"Were. Apparently." he scoffed at the comment, pointing at the casket behind his back.
"Semantics."
Silence again. Until the younger man sobbed, mouth quickly covered by his hand to muffle the gut wrenching sound that Porter could no longer stand. Vincent's forehead hit the side of the casket, an empty and dull thud echoing around them, ringing in their ears, so sensitive due to their nature. The coffin was empty, much to his anguish, and even in the most vulnerable hour of his life, he could not count on his mother being there, spilling his doubts and confession to a piece of wood, as meaningless as his promises to be a better son if it all turned out to be a falsehood.
In the haze of his pain, he at least resigned from breaking into the morgue, opting for the cold stairs and company of saints looking down on him from their paintings. Even then, he could not face what he was so homesick for, her last memory being the one he decided to cling to instead of seeing the old face for the last time. Maybe he would regret it later, but wasn't his life filled with it already?
While he cried, tears staining his sleeve, shirt and falling onto the steps, Porter's arm wrapped around him, pulling in into an awkward hug that meant more than any words could. Gently shushing the broken Prince, with one hand rubbing his back, the other placed at the nape of his neck, he tried to mimic from the foggy memory what Dana did for him, whenever he felt sad. Though Vincent's feelings were much worse that nightmares of a nine year old, this comfort was the only thing he could offer to him in the moment.
In some time, he would get up and make sure there were no cameras or trespassers who could have seen them both. He would fix the lock with his magic, hide any sign that someone broke in. Maybe for the sake of covert, maybe for the sake of Vincent's sanity and worry that surely would come later.
And by the end, when Vincent would feel okay to leave, Porter would hold him again, a small, white carnation conjured from his fingertips. A last rite of orphaned son to his beloved mother.